Educate Yourself

With the election coming up, I have decided to be a responsible citizen and read about all the party platforms and to genuinely consider the pros and cons of each.  I encourage everyone to do the same because it's our civil duty to learn about what is going on in the politics of our country.  People all over the world would literally kill to have to opportunity to vote so it's not something that can be taken lightly.

So in my due diligence, I went to the 3 main party website: www.conservative.ca, www.liberal.ca and www.ndp.ca in order to check out what all these old farts are talking about in terms of bettering my country in their respectful opinions.

The Conservative party page seemed to be a whole lot of hot air really.  A large ambiguous list of vague goals and ideals is found under their platform.  I found that most things on the list lacked direction and were simply statements of how to treat Canadians which are inarguable points considering most people can agree about freedom of speech and religion and worship and the like.  So already we are looking productive on the Tory front...

I feel Steven Harper has kinda fumbled the ball on this whole federal budget thing; I tried reading up on this topic but I got bored.  Before I quit reading I came to the conclusion that the general consensus is that Steve screwed the pooch on this one.  Having been found in contempt of parliament, he lacks my confidence as well as the confidence of the house apparently.  Failing to disclose a large portion of the allocated funds and poor allocation of the funds that were disclosed is pretty shady but I'm sure Harper will stand by his "I am not a crook" philosophy.  The point is: this whole fiasco has shaken my confidence and has caused me to look elsewhere for vote possibilities.

The NDP party's platform on their website was severely lacking and quite uninformative.  4 sets of 2 sentences is hardly a platform but apparently they find it sufficient to inform their followers.  Sounds a bit like blind faith to me.  Seems like they don't have a lot to stand on but are merely there as a back-up for the Liberals, like a little brother in a fight who actually wouldn't last 2 minutes in the first round on their own.  Or like a dog chasing a car, they wouldn't know what to do with it even if they caught it.

Ahhh the Liberals.  Their platform portion of their website was the only one that was at all comprehensive.  They had plenty of information, so much that it was divided into tabs and subsections!  Their IT staff must have really exercised their skills to set up those links.  But really, they were the only ones who seemed to have real ideas and a general direction in terms of goals and progression for Canada.  Who knows if they would actually DO something about those policies after being hypothetically elected but I guess that's the whole fun of this political gambling game. 

That's all well and good to know about what the party wants but that is only part of this whole political race.  The other part is about who will be the face of Canada.  Steve Harper is losing votes by the minute, every time someone reads an article about this whole budget blunder and seems to be a lot shadier than originally suspected, even for a politician. 

Jack Layton is the only candidate that I actually like as a person, he won my respect when he appeared on MuchMusic in his campaign for the last federal election while none of the other PM candidates bothered to show up so that proved to me that at least he acknowledges the young adult vote.  All the charm in the world is not going to bulk up your party with substance.

Throughout my research, I have found myself inclined to vote Liberal except for the fact that I cannot STAND Michael Ignatieff.  He seems like the greasiest, slimiest politician you could find and they chose to put him as the face.  He has a smug and arrogant look about him in every picture or commercial or interview I see him in.  I don't like his attitude and the air about him;  he seems to be doing this as a hobby and not because he genuinely cares about the Canadian public but is more so in it for self-interest.  He sounds to me like a pot stirrer with his whole coalition government threat which is an unheard of notion in the Canadian government.  Just because it is technically within the realm of possibility in parliament, does not mean you should do it.  It causes me to wonder about his motivations and to speculate about what other radical political movements he could possibly pursue if given the authority to do so.  If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck; if it looks like a pedofile and talks like a politician, it's probably Michael Ignatieff.

I think one of the big reasons Barack Obama was voted into office was because he inspired people.  He made people care about politics again and he made them believe that they were significant.  Although he seems to be lacking in terms of fulfilling promises but what politician actually does what they say they will do?  That seems to be a concept too radical for even politics.  At least Obama showed people he had passion and showed the power of a shared vision. 

We need more people who are passionate and can inspire that passion in others, we need people who actually CARE and who make politics come alive.  Without this democracy, we would be nothing.  Too many people seem to be complacent about this whole process, both on the side of the voters and the side of the politicians.

So it boils down to this: who do you vote for when no one seems worth voting for?